For those who are not already aware of this from the MPlayer site, slashdot or elsewhere. the MPlayer developers have alledged that Kiss Technology have violated the GPL by using parts of MPlayers subtitle decoder in their DVD player's firmware. As the interview and news on MPlayers front page suggests, the code itself is trivial. It's just the issue at sake.

For more information, including a somewhat head-in-the-sand interview with Kiss's MD

http://mplayerhq.hu

This must mean that Kiss technology will hear from SCO soon, since SCO owns everything related to Linux.

Martin

Sounds to me as if Kiss have decided to sit back and wait for the GPL to be challenged in court. Is it the OSDL that deals with defending the GPL? Hmm no, they only help out with SCO troubles.

Sounds like the Mplayer team are going to need a Hungarian and/or copyright(?) lawyer since at the moment it's simply a case of "you stole our code!", "no we didn't and yah boo sucks to you!".

Is this the GPL test case we've all been waiting for?

The FSF ( Free Software Foundation ) will usually at times handle these in extreme cases. But I'm sure it depends on the case and how much money they have since they mainly operate on donated funds.

Cheers.

I hope Kiss technologies is smart enough not to make a big story out of this and start writing their own code or release their firmware for free.

By the way, how did the Mplayer creators found the source code for that firmware?


Good luck, boyo.

Yeah, it might kill you.

Forgive me for being a moron, but how do they know this?

KISS dvd players run on linux, and they are proud to say that. and they stick to the GPL when they can't avoid it, so publish the firmware. there's actually a full description of the whys on the mplayer site... but once you know tha it IS linux etc... it's understandable

They search the binaries for strings with the "strings" function. Do a "man string" and you know what exactly it does.

So basically they compare the used strings in Kiss' firmware with the ones used in mplayer.

I think you can imagine that it is a strange coincidence that so many strings are equal even though the two programs were supposed to coded by different people at different places and different times.

Yes, I'm quite aware of what the 'string' command does (and 'nm' might be useful here as well), but that hardly constitutes a proof of anything. Hell, someone may have thought it funny to duplicate the strings and symbol names just to make it look like it was ripped off.

But why? Surely the names given/invented are for the originators benefit. They are easily rememberable words to avoid too much hassle by coders. Why would anyone give duplicate names as a joke? The Kiss programmers would have crippled themselves straight away.

I am no programmer, but surely that wouldn't happen and saying that each and every instance is a coincidence is just disingenuous. The MPlayer code is there for all to see. And if this was all above board and an accident/a coincidence, why would Kiss try to fight it to the bitter end? Why not just say, "whoops, here's our code (as it should be under the GPL) and we won't do it again"?

Why should they have to GPL their code just to fend off a false (even if not necessarily baseless) accusation? Assuming they didn't rip off the mplayer code (which I doubt is the case--you're right that it is highly unlikely that this was a mere coincidence or a deliberate joke, but still the evidence presented so far hardly constitutes proof), they have done nothing wrong, so why should they have to change what they're doing?

Then why don't they do what SCO does, have a NDA setup so the mplayer developers can take a look at the code to see for themselves? Simple enough eh?

Why should everyone be concerned when all it takes is for them to prove it instead of them trying to say they don't have to show the code cause of proprietary code, trademarks, copyright, etc?

Stop denying it and prove it is what they should do. Stop beating around the bush. All it takes for me to be concerned is a few lines and then denial of using GPL code they might have taken from an opensource project that freely distributes its code. If they are making profit off of their code, well then I think mplayer deserves a piece of the pie. This situation to me has guilty written all over it from KISS's response to mplayers claims.

My two cents.

Because (again, this is assuming that they did not rip anything off, which I admit is probably not the case) if they did nothing wrong then they should not be forced to do anything.

Because the burden of proof rests with the accuser. As an example of why this is a good idea, if you were to capriciously accuse me of stealing your wristwatch when in fact I did not, then why should I have to go out of my way to prove your claims false--which might well be impossible--if you're the one who is making baseless claims that cannot be proven true because they are not true?

If the accused was required to prove his own innocence rather than the accuser being required to prove guilt, we would all go around accusing each other of murder and rape and kidnapping with impunity and nothing would get done.

Well, I really don't see them having baseless and falseless claims with what they've provided and displayed for all to see. Now if they were like SCO and didn't have nothing or showed anything to us, well, then I can see your point. But this is not the point in which you've failed to see clearly.

It is a small piece they've showed but enough to raise eyebrows. Why would a company making dvd players, paying programmers need to steal code from an opensource GPL'd project I ask? If they didn't, great, everyone's happy. If they did, well, prove you didn't from what they've discovered which is not baseless or falseless.

There's a difference if there was nothing, but in this case there is evidence. You always try to twist the facts around which doesn't work and your analogies of the situation don't work either in this case. MPlayer Developers found code that exactly matches their code, I'd want the company to prove it to me as well.

Simply put, code was found that matched mplayers, put it up and prove its not true or just admit your guilt, its that simple.

My two cents..

They DIDN'T find any code--if they did there wouldn't be any question, would there? They merely found matching text strings, which, although enough to warrant suspicion, constitute proof of nothing. It is up to the mplayer people to prove their point--if they can't, then there's no reason why KISS should have to go out of its way to deflect the accusations.